polycentrism

A Polycentric World Rejects the Missionary Mindset

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I recently spoke at an event in Berlin to inaugurate the first issue of the Global Geopolitics peer reviewed journal. For a variety of time and pacing reasons I ended up cutting significant portions of my already-written speech from my actual delivery, so I just wanted to put the entire text here in its original form. When video of the roundtable forum goes up I will add it to the links on my publications tab on this site.

…..

George Santayana in The Birth of Reason once wrote: 

“The humanitarian, like the missionary, is often an irreducible enemy of the people he seeks to befriend, because he has not imagination enough to sympathize with their proper needs nor humility enough to respect them as if they were his own. Arrogance, fanaticism, meddlesomeness, and imperialism may then masquerade as philanthropy.”

I believe that in diplomacy, especially in multipolar diplomacy, this quote summarizes something of critical importance to understand going forward.

It has become customary to begin these types of speeches with a declaration that Francis Fukuyama was wrong, that history has returned. But this doesn’t go far enough. History never ended or even paused in the first place. What happened was that the hubris of teleology, of ideology as policy, takes root in complacent and decadent elites because it flatters their self-conception as the protagonists of the story. A hangover of the Book of Revelation, human history is held to be some kind of a moral fable leading inexorably to a singular outcome where good and evil are judged by universal standards- with the imperial administrators, of course, as jury. 

And when this Young Earth Creationist version of geopolitics inevitably fails, the prophets of doom descend. Heaven, having failed to arrive, has been replaced by Hell. We are to be tormented in a pit of fire forever for having come up short of our supposedly saintly potential.

This counter- vision is just as ridiculous and idealist as the one in which it replaces. 

The unipolar moment was, ultimately, a freakish occurrence. Other powers like the Mongols and the British came close, but the inability to leave the Eurasian landmass of the former and the continued existence of proper peer rivals in Europe of the latter meant not even they reached the heights that the United States enjoyed for a brief moment after the fall of the Soviet Union. 

And yet we hear constantly from so much of the commentariat that the supposedly reasonable options are either somehow restoring the 1990s consensus by voting the right way in a singular election or to live in a world of perpetual world war. But the first is now materially impossible due to rising capability of other power poles, and the second is so undesirable that only a conspiracy of true ideologues or incompetents would seek to bring it about. Sometimes, when I look at the foreign policy elite on both sides of the Northern Atlantic, I genuinely fear that the second is a very real possibility. Much like how a cult can pivot from a failed prophecy to mass suicide as compensation.

So the question arises: if we understand that 99% of human history was effectively ‘multipolar’, then how do we most constructively learn to be normal again after having bathed in the mentally stultifying lies of a universal human destiny? I would argue that the key lies in seeing things less as multiple poles contesting a shared future and rather as true polycentrism. There is no shared political journey whatsoever. The future will be as divergent as the past was. With strategic foresight this could even be a good thing.

An assumption we have inherited from the discredited liberal international order that should be fought is that to acknowledge political divergence is to embrace a kind of zero-sum expansionism. If one group doesn’t have something, it loses it. All or nothing. But the majority of stable and lasting power politics in diplomatic history is not this at all, it is the creation, maintenance, and navigation of the balance of power. Creating no doubt temporary islands of calm in the chaotic tempest of stormy seas. And the successful balance of powers of history, from Westphalia to the Postwar Era, were all ultimately based on accepting and even affirming different paths of governance. Different religions or ideologies between peers, even rival peers, might color the rhetoric but they would not prevent them from dealing with each other first and foremost as sovereign geographic entities.

Liberal internationalism, in its quest to become the universal arbiter of morality as a kind of Fourth Abrahamic Religion, forgot that once upon a time its greatest asset was that it acknowledged many forms of being. Its rise in political thinking was in reaction to the horrors of the religiously tinged and unrestrained nature of so much of 17th Century warfare, with philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes openly validating the concept of many different kinds of regimes having by necessity to exist with each other. As the philosopher John Gray put it in his book The Two Faces of Liberalism:

“One of the paradoxes that comes with accepting that there are incommensurate values is that tragic conflicts of value can sometimes melt away. If there are many incommensurable ways in which humans can flourish, choices among them need not be tragic.”

And just because liberal internationalism is dying out after decades of hubris and overreach need not mean that liberalism itself will die out. The reality of polycentrism is that the future promises diversity, not uniformity. Russian dreams of being a kind of messianic counter-liberalism are just as delusional as the very thing they claim to be countering as they order the planet away from the accommodation of a Modus Vivendi and into an artificial binary camp inspired by Platonic ideals. But multitudes, not binaries, now reign.

If the United States is the premier liberal state, it was not founded as a messianic or missionary power. That came much later. In fact, it originally was done as an experiment not just in political distinction, but in geographic distinction as well. To break with Britain was to break with putting the global empire’s needs over its own growing core. It is less well known today how after allying with France to break away from Britain, and feeling an immense euphoria and vindication with the rise of the French Revolution shortly thereafter, the U.S. turned against France when the new fellow enlightenment republic began to pressure the young nation to join it in waging global war. Indeed, the U.S. Navy itself was originally founded to combat attempts to force ideological solidarity by a once beloved ally. The first naval battles in American history would be against France, the only other enlightenment republic. So much for democratic peace theory.

Today the Trans-Atlantic shoe is on the other foot, with U.S. belligerence towards, of all countries, Denmark. Mercurial shifts in domestic policy cause the mask to fall and unequal relations once referred to as partnerships are now exposed as vassalage networks between an imperial core and subalterns. Denmark, which stood beside the U.S. for so long, who sent its armed forces into Afghanistan at American behest, now gets its thanks in terms of thuggish and short-sighted demands for Greenland. Trans-Atlanticism has a far worse record on both sides of the Atlantic than its biggest defenders would ever admit. Much as communist solidarity in the Cold War could not survive the Sino-Soviet Split, the ideological alliance has been shown time and time again to be the most overrated concept in geopolitical history. The needs of the alliance have also ironically harmed liberalism at home on both sides of the Atlantic, as frank discussions of what the national interest of these different regions have long been buried in exchange for a gargoyle of globalism which yokes vast regions together under the promise of some unproven ultimate ideological or global market based outcome.

And yet the states of Eastern Europe rightly fear Russian power and intentions towards them too. But this is not an either-or choice, it is a challenge. Can European states form an independent bloc that can stand up to both the U.S. and Russia? I would argue yes, but they must drop the ultimate conceit of universalism which they have inherited first from the Age of Discovery and then from the subsequent Victorian periods. No longer in the cockpit of history, they must contend with what they were before Columbus: Asia’s westernmost peninsula. A region like any other. But this could be a liberation rather than a curse. Free of the delusion of being missionaries of global telos, Europeans can now rediscover the imperative virtue of having a specific geographically located interest. They can have, as Phil Cunliffe would say in his excellent book on The National Interest, an actually comprehensible internal debate on what is feasible and what is not. An open contestation between citizens and politicians of what is in their collective best interest. It is something they seem to have forgotten how to do, so reliant on American power to maintain the illusion of continued global tastemakers as they have become. 

They should also be cautious that their first instinct, especially here in Germany if recent history is any guide, could be to become a kind of Saudi Arabia of militant humanism. An exporter of a universalist world view as a “moral conscience” that retains its purity in light of Big Bad America’s descent into overt gangsterism. This would be a massive mistake. Strategic autonomy comes not from posturing and pontification, as domestic politics are likely to change what is ideological fashionable on a whim, but rather it comes from a rooted geographic interest that emphasizes the local- and hence anti-universal- over that of any abstract global cause. People will rally to defend their homes in a way they never would to defend the idea of a global governance that was and will always be used to justify whatever the strongest powers, upon whose whims it relies on, wish to do. 

This brings us to the question of the smaller states in polycentrism. Great powers must learn to live with each other or face ruin. Middle Powers are likely to make huge gains under polycentrism as their freedom of action opens up in their immediate near-abroad, at least so long as they avoid making revisionist bids for hegemony beyond their means. But the future could well be bleak for the smaller nations of the world, or the ones without favorable geographic defenses. Some will have to reach an accord with a dominant regional power. Others risk being contested in clashing spheres of influence. It might be tempting for them to ask that someone save them, but this cannot be guaranteed either. 

I would contend that these countries too must learn to embrace difference and distinction. Even if the great powers hopefully learn to live with each other and put a halt to grand ideological battles, they will almost certainly try to affirm their contested frontiers with projects of ideological dross. Religious and racial chauvinism, clash of civilizations, left vs right, etc. For countries that wish to avoid becoming the playthings of others it becomes doubly important that even if one wishes to reach a subordinate security arrangement with a great power it must combat missionary activity from the outside world lest it risk foreign fueled civil strife at home. 

The polycentric world could be made stable and its worst excesses curbed. But only if the accommodation reached between the powers is one of a Modus Vivendi that explicitly eschews grand ideological projects or the conversion of others along cultural, religious, political or economic universals. Otherwise, whatever benefits there are of returning to the core bedrock of stability- geography and negotiated interest- will be immediately squandered by supremacist factions who are uninterested in long term stability.

All orders are temporary and become obsolete, of course. This is the humility that those of us opposed to treating history as teleology can affirm. But it is worth looking at the results achieved by the most aggressively anti-missionary state in history: The Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. Founded in an internal coup against a then reigning newly-unified government who saw its primary purpose as increasingly fruitless expansion abroad, the Shogunate knew two things: 1. Spanish and Portuguese missionaries were destabilising society at home and possibly paving the way for future integration as a vassal or colony in their growing empires, and 2. Attempting to displace the Chinese as masters of East Asia by force had been a failure. 

So what did they do? They played to their geographic strengths as a large archipelago and closed the country. They expelled or exterminated the missionaries and invested everything into building a distinct state separate from both the Chinese tribute system and the European empires. Edo, now Tokyo, became the largest city in the world. Infrastructure expanded. The world’s first government mandated national forest preserves were set aside. And above all, a country that had known nothing but war for over a century now would know peace for well over 200 years. The order had its excesses, of course. In time it would become obsolete and in need of replacement. But it still stands as an example of what a country can do when it utilizes its unique geographic gifts to cultivate a specific sense of self-interest separate from the schemes of greater powers and divorced from delusions of being “on the right side of history.”

The context of the Eurozone today is vastly different from 17th Century Japan or 18th Century America, of course, but that is my point: the contexts are always regional and different. In the 21st Century the European states are economically subordinated to U.S. interests in a way that harms their capacity for independent action but so integrated that it will take cautious long term planning to make a pivot away from dollar dependence and security networks. I suspect we will see a variety of paths from different states unfold, and doing so will be a boon to social and political science research if nothing else.

We may have little control over the vast bureaucratic entities of the modern state and the chaos of events, but by purging ourselves of the missionary mentality we could begin the process of making the world more habitable and conducive to diplomacy. Caring about the physical space around us goes far further than caring about abstract universal idealism ever could. The energies of activists and reformers could be spent responding to their actual constituents. Change starts at home.

Every country with remotely natural or defensible borders has now been given the opportunity to find divergent ways to secure their sense of self and security. Many will fail, but the more that embrace localism and anti-universal paths to security, the more viable the non-aligned buffer state becomes. Perhaps more relevant to us social scientists, the more interesting case studies we have to test theories on as well. This would be riding the tiger of polycentrism, in a world of many shrines to different genus loci it is best not to adhere to a universal church. Psychologically, the North Atlantic may be the least prepared region of the world for this shift today, but if they want to avoid future calamities they would be wise to prepare themselves. 

But this quest for reasoned distinction is not alien to the North Atlantic, merely to its moderns. If I may close by quoting at length from George Washington’s “Farewell Address”, which was as good advice for a new and young republic then as it is for those disoriented by the end of unipolarity today:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? 

In short, reject Baerbockism, embrace circumstantial realism.

Middle Powers, Small States, and Neutrality in a Multi-Polar World

/ geotrickster / 2 Comments
Garni Temple, for the cult of Mithra, built by Tiridates I in the 1rst Century CE. During this period Armenia was a mostly neutral buffer state precariously balanced between Rome and Parthia. The royal family came from the Parthian Dynasty but the succession had to be approved by Rome.

I just came back from a trip to Armenia to present at the Yerevan Dialogues, a conference about the changing nature of foreign policy in a post-unipolar moment. I had prepared these following remarks, which I ended up not using because they overlapped too much with another presenters topic. Rather than force everyone through repeats, I elected to just wing something else instead. But I am going to put my original prepared remarks here anyway so they don’t go to waste.

The general trend of our work at The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy has been to prepare people for the inevitable reality of the return of the multipolar world. This world is a return to normality to over 99% of human history, so why does it require so much effort to conceptualize?

The answer is that it does not- for most people around the world, who have lived in a reality of hard-nosed great power politics continuously. Nearer the imperial core of the North Atlantic, however, those of us who still see this reality remain a minority, however, albeit a growing one.

This creates a disconnect with many weighty states on the world stage living in a nostalgic fever-dream, albeit one they seem to be ever-so-fitfully awakening from. In the meanwhile, we are constantly subjected to narratives about the ‘New Cold War’ or other obsolete reference points to periods of history irrelevant to the current realignment.

One of the largest trends which we at IPD have identified has been the rise of the Middle Powers. In a world where there are basically three global powers of diminished capacity and increasing capability for regionally anchored middle-tier nations, the name of the game is polycentrism. This is the opposite of hegemony and far from anything resembling the Cold War. Stronger countries with regional-but not fully global- ambitions will become the equals of the superpowers within the realm of their own near-abroad. This restricts the sway of the global powers, locking them out of regional domination

To many around the world who tire of American hubris or the globalization of conflict, this sounds like a welcome improvement. It will be- for some. But the smaller states located in less geopolitically stable regions now face possibly heightened dangers. A regionally dominant middle power, or even worse, multiple regionally potent countries vying for dominance over their near abroad, could spell an increase in danger for these smaller countries whose core imperative is to survive before any other concern.

This is especially true in West Asia, a region prone to so much conflict and great power rivalry. What possible path could the more vulnerable countries of this region take in order to maximalize their chances of avoiding conflict with their sovereignty intact? I would argue that while we are far away from it right now, the only direction with any long term feasibility is one of neutrality and nonalignment between regional and global powers alike, where the declining influence of the globals is leveraged against the rising influence of the locals. The superpowers may yet have a constructive role to play in the saga of small states- and in doing so they can retain some credibility in a world of resurgent middle powers.

Balance of Threat for the smaller states

This brings me to the other side of the polycentric world, the one that both accepts the reality of the rise of the Middle Powers while also understanding the security concerns of the smaller states around them. What path forward is there for states who fear the growing influence of their regional powers? One path stands out to me, a neutralist accommodation occupying a guaranteed space between both the regional and the global powers.

Global powers might be consumed with concerns over the Balance of Power, but the smaller a nation’s world profile it is, the less relevant this concern becomes. What matters more to the smaller nations of the world is Balance of Threat. Rather than looking at a state’s overall potential for danger, balance of threat theory dictates that a country will seek to balance its security against other nations whose potential for revisionist behavior directly affects them, regardless of how powerful those nations may or may not be on the world stage. With the declining ability for great powers to directly intervene, smaller states should not plan on being able to rely on alliance style security guarantees from outside nations, however. This poses the question of what kind of policy to pursue.

The global powers may no longer have hegemony over entire regions outside of their neighborhood, but they are still the world’s most important actors. Smaller states now have an opportunity to engage in sovereignty-affirming balancing behavior. The idea should be to become useful business partners in a way that does not threaten the regional powers nor requires the traditional subordination of smaller states to the great powers.

A hypothetical example of how this would work would be as follows:

1. A small state in a region of high competition between regional powers makes clear its intention to seek neutrality between all parties. It does this by simultaneously appealing to the region and the relevant global powers.

2. In order to gain the regional leverage needed to have its position respected, the smaller state prioritizes the global power’s recognition for this new stance. It can do this by appealing to the global power as being a secure and reliable trade, regional resource, or finance hub partner that would be politically oblivious to regional-power-imposed sanctions and hardened against external disruptions. A country that is always open for business is a country that can maintain relationships with distant nations.

3. The smaller country’s military is only for defense, and it disavows joining large global alliance networks. It does, however, maintain a strong enough military to serve as deterrence to conventional attack by revisionist regional powers. By maintaining friendly if unaligned relations with the great powers, it also increases its options to introduce qualitative advantages to its forces. This can be done without formal security arrangements.

4. Should a country be successful in achieving the above deterrence, its odds of having its desired status of achieving neutrality greatly increase. Should this happen, the ability to attract investment from multiple regional powers could further bolster the country’s status and security.

Neutral and Buffer States

Buffer states are often famous for when they fail, such as Belgium in 1914, but there are many success stories too, including Belgium itself for generations before that fateful date. Some other examples exploited natural geography to further reinforce the natural borders already in place. Nepal, between the British and Qing empires and now modern China and India, is an example of this. Austria in the Cold War, with the victorious powers of World War II all agreeing to a mutual military withdrawal, is another. Perhaps the longest and most surprising of such states to modern observers is that of late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth-century Afghanistan. Not wanting to rule the unprofitable and warlike territory itself, the British Raj nevertheless was consumed by the specter of a Russian invasion through the territory during the height of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia, often referred to as “The Great Game.” After a succession of fruitless wars there, it was agreed to draw the boundaries of Afghanistan in such a way that Russian and British imperial interests would not directly collide with each other. The arrangement would bring a surprising amount of stability for the tribalistic nation, and only collapse when a series of coups and internal upheavals opened the way for a Soviet invasion in 1979 and subsequent Pakistani and U.S. intervention.

Lest it be assumed that a long-term successful stint as a buffer nation can only come about from circumstances of comparative stability, the experience of Uruguay offers one of the more remarkable transformations from instability to long-term success. Contested for centuries between the Portuguese and Spanish empires, the early independence of Uruguay was rocked with trouble. Both Argentina and Brazil attempted to dominate the country, and internal factions fought each other on the domestic front, sometimes in open civil war. These contests even helped spark South America’s deadliest war, the War of the Triple Alliance, which further seemed to relegate the region’s smaller countries to domination by their larger neighbors. And yet it was the cost of that war, coupled with the desire to maintain some kind of balance in the region, that ensured Uruguay would be able to harness its natural agrarian bounty and access to ports in order to become one of the most developed and, eventually, peaceful Latin American countries. When Brazil and Argentina could both openly admit that they feared the space between them being dominated by the other, it became possible for them to mutually agree that neither would absorb the country into its security arrangements.

The Two Big Boys of Western Asia

Now let’s look a bit closer in space to where we presently occupy, West Asia. Ever since the fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire and the subsequent collapse of the Alexandrian and Seleucid Empires that toppled it, the region’s history has been dominated by perpetual great power rivalry from a state based in Anatolia and a state based in the Iranian plateau. Rome and Parthia, Rome and Sassanids, Rome and the Caliphate. The subdivision of the Seljuks of Rum with the rest of their empire, the Ak Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu Empires, Ottomans vs Timurids, Safavids, and Nader Shah. And today, Turkey and Iran.

Then a third player entered the game. The political falling out of the Golden Horde with the Ilkhanate in the late 13th Century in a battle over grazing lands in modern day Azerbaijan was a precursor to Russia’s entry into regions south of its homeland. It would eventually be this new player, starting in the 18th Century and culminating in the global power projection of the Soviet Union, that would turn a two player game into a three player one. For a time, Russia was by far the biggest player of all of these, but what we are seeing now is a proportional reversion back to the traditional Anatolian and Iranian regional powerhouses- just with the addition of Russia. Moscow as a global power, Ankara and Tehran as growing regional powers.

For now, the dynamic is that Turkey is allied to the NATO bloc and Iran is allied to Russia. This seems to replicate the traditional Cold War alliance structure that I spoke of as obsolete before…but we are in a time of rapid transition. Russia and Iran share mutual enemies, but not many constructive interests outside of Syria and some defense cooperation. Russia still has many dealings with Israel and across the Gulf region. Turkey, meanwhile, has taken the most independent of NATO course possible in regard to both Ukraine and the Red Sea, positioning itself as a pivot power that has the protection of the North Atlantic alliance while also acting blatantly in its own interests.

There is thus no inevitability to smaller nations being perpetually subordinated in this fluid situation, but I do think there are a few different factors at play today that could bode well for attempts to move in a neutralist direction. Colonialism is out these days, and not primarily because it is ‘wrong from a moral perspective’ but rather because it no longer pays. An intractable occupation of a people with their own culture and loyalties is expensive and inefficient. Trade can be a much better and cheaper method of achieving similar goals. Most importantly, great power allies can no longer trust the subservience of their regional power partnerships, and so need to diversify their investments. Smaller countries provide this failsafe.

Regional and great powers alike fear more relative loss to other powers, rather than the autonomy of smaller states. A small state, using the Westphalian system of sovereignty that we have decided to conduct most international relations within the present is much better at keeping foreign domination at bay so long as it can balance the regional powers enough that all except the neutral country as a buffer and reliable nonpartisan meeting point. Due to the variety of deeply held territorial disputes and grievances in this region, especially those held between smaller neighbors, the odds of being sucked into a regional power alliance network are high. But all this just means to me that if there is any region that needs to explore small state neutrality and the potential windfall it can offer, it is here. If it can work in this region, it can work anywhere.

The danger I see here is not that the smaller countries won’t see this opportunity, I am sure most do. Nor is it even so much the inevitability of power politics between Ankara and Tehran over places like Lebanon, Syria, and other parts of their near-abroad. No, what I see as the first problem comes from my side of the ocean- the inability of Washington DC and perhaps also Moscow to recognize that neutral buffer states are in its own interests. Failed attempts to enact regime change in Syria and Libya have greatly destabilized the region, while the flexible nonalignment of many members of the Gulf Cooperation Council show the first stirrings of moving away from global binaries (and perhaps global oil price stabilization). Should the opportunity ever arise for Lebanon to become a fully sovereign and neutral state, it would be better for everyone save perhaps Israel if it did so. Iranian and Russian influence over countries like Syria and Iraq has only grown due to the aggressive and Manichean nature of US policy towards those countries. Meanwhile, false narratives of ‘the west’ vs the rest, or ‘axis of authoritarianism’ prevent North Atlantic policymakers from recognizing that rather than supporting maximization of their own influence in each and ever country, they should be working towards helping countries opt out of alliance networks entirely, creating a far more stable web of non-aligned nations whose business is open to all and whose sovereignty is open to none.

The interesting thing is that China seems to get this on a level the other world powers do not. There is no political engineering there so far, only a desire to do business. As of this moment, they have the advantage in courting the smaller states. They would be wise to keep up this approach, as it is the sober statecraft of the polycentric future.

The middle powers, likewise, must recognize that they are in a bidding war, and will be looked at more favorably by their neighbors if they can reign in the revisionism towards smaller countries. The first middle power to offer a more benevolent offer to its near abroad is the one who receives more trade opportunities and constructive engagement in turn.

So we have two dynamics here: the middle power who can get along with smaller countries makes more friends at home, and the great power who in turn can tolerate the rise of the middle power prevents the unchecked growth of other rival great powers abroad. This is a model for potential future stability, and it could start in regions where the smaller countries are looking for opportunities in a dangerous multipolar world. While distant from today’s immediate reality, it also represents a possibility for greater regional stability in West Asia.